The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

to know what's not fair? Three times, Belk, last week, I get on a plane, fly out to some god-awful piece of frozen waste, and say last rites for a guy who'd gotten blown up by a mine or a bomb. Two of those bombs were ours, by the way. One, Jap.”
    I waited.
    “I couldn't do a damn thing for those boys, other than try to get them into something like a state of grace before they made a run at heaven. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” He paused to shake out another cigarette and light it off the one he had. “Pray for us,” he finished. “This army doesn't need any more damn priests saving souls, Belk. We need somebody who can save lives.”
    “Yes, Father,” I said.
    He waved this away. “Or take some lives,” he said, hunching forward. “Then you come to me, Belk,” he went on. “You shoot a few of those bastards for me.” He stood. “Then we'll see if you want to be- or can be-a priest.” I stood as well, thinking I was supposed to leave, but instead, he talked for another twenty minutes.
    Anchorage, apparently, was a frozen Gomorrah, and Father Pabich was worried about me. Not so much that I'd damage my potential as a priest, but more that I'd “fall into the sins of distraction.” And Anchorage offered many: bars, women, men-and, Father Pabich said, “magicians.”
    “I'm not much for magic, Father,” I said.
    “I don't mean card tricks,” he said, “although you'd be wise to give cards a wide berth, too. I mean people who don't trust the way of God, people who see spirits, people who worship idols. Masons, Republicans, or strike-breaking Pinkerton men-you know who I'm talking about. Magicians: I'm trying to make it simple for you. People who put their faith in something other than God.” He looked at me carefully. “Listen: people say God's got a lot of work still to do up here,” he said. “I say,
we've
got work to do. Right?” I nodded. “Go in peace, son,” he said. “Just don't go too far.”
     
    MAGICIANS: SUDDENLY, I wasn't worried so much about doing evil. There were plenty of others here doing it for me, and what's more, it sounded pretty damn interesting. Rather than striking fear in me, Father Pabich gave me a kind of fearlessness. As a stand-in for God, Father Pabich was of the roaring, Old Testament variety, but the cigarettes and swearing made me realize that, just like everything else, God operated under different rules in the Alaskan army.
    Which is a long way of saying that I went straight back downtown. But after Father's hype, downtown was actually something of a disappointment. Magicians: maybe I'd expected I'd walk down the street and be in the midst of a circus parade. But it looked a lot more like scout camp. Mountains all around, loud voices, uniforms, dirty faces, and everywhere, mud and muck. No girls.
    Scout camp isn't so far from the truth, I suppose. Alaska was still a territory then, not a state, and Anchorage was more outpost than town, its civic boosters' and newspapers' claims to the contrary. Downtown, such as it was, looked like a city for a few blocks, but soon enough, paved streets gave way to gravel and, inevitably, mud. Much of it looked like it had been built by a film crew for a B-grade western-sagging wooden facades, peeling paint promising goods and services from another era. A source of great pride was the city's Federal Building, which housed the court and post office. It showed up on more than one postcard, looking quite formal and impressive, if a bit small-it helped that the various ramshackle buildings nearby were always cropped out of the picture.
    Any magicians had been cropped out as well; from my walks around town, I determined that Anchorage 's population consisted entirely of men and dogs, the dogs more likely to be sober. That's probably because dogs couldn't read the paper, where they'd find ads like the one I spotted that afternoon for the Big Dipper Liquor Store (conveniently located next door to the Big Dipper Bar). The type must have been